Under the DMCA, service providers like Google are generally shielded from copyright liability if they remove access to copyrighted material when notified by the rightsholder.

The provision, a compromise among a wide range of interests, was intended to protect copyright owners while making it possible for Internet businesses to avoid crippling copyright liability.

That comprehensive treatment by the telecommunications community is one that would give network providers new, explicit immunities from copyright liability by their customers.

The structures of networks involved in this lawsuit were designed, possibly indirectly in response to the Napster decision, to provide layers of protection against copyright liability.

The DMCA's provides a safe harbor from copyright liability for sites that comply with takedown requests for individual items.

It praises section 512 of the DMCA, which gives online service providers a "safe harbor" from copyright liability if they promptly remove infringing materials.

At the same time, a company could avoid copyright liability if it was "highly burdensome" for the company to detect and prevent copyright infringement.

First, it established DMCA safe harbor protection for online locker services, potentially granting them "broad immunity from copyright liability".

In June, legislation supported by the industries was introduced in the Senate that would explicitly extend copyright liability to distributors of file-sharing software.

The software rental provisions permit owners of lawfully made copies of computer programs acquired before December 1, 1990, to dispose of them without copyright liability.